Consecration
by Steelcircle
Summary: Scrapper faces a deadline that may prove deadly.


**Consecration**

"Useless. We will never finish on time." Hook sighs and retreats from the planning table to lean against the wall, still giving himself a good view of the plans. Bonecrusher and Long Haul pace around, too antsy to stand still. Scavenger stands quietly off to the side, turning some piece of junk over in his hands.

"Then we'll die," Long Haul reminds us gloomily, down even for a complainer like him. If this fool plan doesn't blow up in our faces, the Autobots' munitions will. Should some trick of fate extend our lives past failure, Megatron will make us wish it hadn't.

Bonecrusher insists, "We're not going to die! We'll figure something out."

How I wish he could be right.

"The materials just aren't holding together! We could do this on Cybertron, easily," contributes Mixmaster. "There's no unifying force to this place!"

Bonecrusher picks up a sickly lavender sample sheet. Though created from Terran raw materials, the sheet is chemically identical to one of Cybertronian manufacture and should, in theory, have the same properties. The sheet buckles in Bonecrusher's hands as if it were made by mere Terrans and not simply of Terran materials. Simply and succinctly, Bonecrusher states, "No soul to it."

"No sould," I agree, bowing my head.

"We ain't got time to snag a 'bot," Long Haul says, knowing my thoughts. A living spark can make just a bit of this soulless, alien planet a little more like Cybertron, a little more willing to accept our building practises. It could make the materials hold together.

Hook laughs mirthlessly. "No mere Autobot could hold _this_ together."

"A soul's a soul," Scavenger says.

Hook makes a sound of derision, folds his arms across his chest, and looks away.

"Pity none of those idiot jets are around. It'd be nice ta take one off his cloud." Bonecrusher grins cruelly. "Or frag - one of those blasted sneaks. Anyone." There's no one out in this forsaken outpost but us, though.

"Even if there were others, we would be noticed. Would we really want the abduction of a fellow Decepticon on our hands?" Scavenger asks.

"None of this talk. We'll just have to design around those stresses and quickly," I decide, wracking my mind for some saving solution.

"How? The squishies' alloys are a joke, and our own aren't holding together on this blasted planet. How many times must I repeat myself?" Mixmaster tosses his arms in the air, drops them to his sides, and then draws one hand to his chin, thinking. His optics flare a bright, dangerous red like heated titanium-steel. "If we could get the materials to work, the plans are viable, yes, they are?"

Hook makes a face in distaste. "There are a number of points that -"

"They'll work," I snap, not in the mood for Hook's quibbles.

"The supplies, do we have enough?" the chemist demands of Long Haul.

"Yeah. Sure," he affirms with a shrug.

"Mixmaster, what are you thinking?" I ask, not understanding. We should be working towards a solution, not wasting time exploring 'what-ifs'.

"Allow me to show you."

Mixmaster leads me out and down into the foundations. The half-started structure, sickly lavender, stands above us, already bending with stress. What is Megatron thinking? Earth is not Cybertron. All planets are created unequal. Mixmaster pauses in front of the nexus box, a few sets of wiring already done.

"Well?" I ask, feeling time slip by too quickly. Mixmaster's optics are dim and grave. The manic brightness has fled. He circles behind me, setting me on edge. There's a _clink_ of fumbled metal, and spin around to see Mixmaster holding something like a sharpened spike, an unwell gleam to the metal giving away a chemical taint. He lunges with the spike, and in shocked stupidity, I just stand there. I watch dumbly as it finds its mark and sinks into my neck joint, a weak point where the armour is thin, as joints are apt to be. Forget the pain. Nothing can express how hurt I am. We are team-mates and friends. We shared a mind with the others as Devastator. We … my strength goes out of me before I can even thinking of fighting back. Some sort of paralysis toxin? My legs buckle, but Mixmaster steadies me and holds me upright, looking absurdly concerned. Leakin' hilarious. I can't even manage a growl or weak radio transmission. Perhaps my optic band shows my rage and incomprehension at this betrayal. Perhaps.

He drags me closer to the power-line nexus-box, pulling off the panels that cover it and some of my own, laying bare my more delicate circuitry. To drag me down here and murder me? That's it? That's senseless. This betrayal without reason hurts all the more and stirs my helpless, hopeless anger. To kill me, he's going about it in an awfully roundabout fashion. Immediately, dozens of better ways come to mind.

Deftly, he severs my voluntary control circuitry. I begin to wonder if he really intends to kill me. Mixmaster never displayed the cruel streak this careful disabling portends, but I see that I don't know him as well as I thought I did. He plucks at the wiring of my neural net. Then, Mixmaster splices the wiring of my neural net into what there is of the electrical grid, and suddenly, my rage and hurt all evaporate, leaving a precipitate of horror. I know what he's doing, and I would know. I've done it a million times myself. I must have been blind not to see what he had in mind, or maybe I just didn't want to see.

The erratic, irritating hum of the electrical grid warbles and reinvents itself, now soothing, now in tune ... now in tune with my own rhythm. Mixmaster fastens me in place first with adhesive to get me in the right position and then welds me fast, as if I'm going anywhere poisoned as I am and with my voluntary control severed as it is. No, he doesn't want me jostled out of place when he closes up the grid box. Mixmaster stands, panel in hand, poised to inter, then sets down the panel and kneels before me. He places a hand on my knee.

"Creators _do_ put so much of themselves into their creations that sometimes they find it hard to distance themselves. Here we see the limit of that function, when the entirety of the creator is put into the creation, and the distance vanishes to nothing. What value does the function attain now, I wonder?" Mixmaster chokes off a nervous high-pitched laugh. "We were all dead, anyway. At least you'll carry on. Goodbye."

He withdraws and replaces the panel with a sigh, leaving me in a darkness lit only by the feeble light of my optic band and internals, the panels that would cover my internals set neatly away to the side. This whole situation is wrong. In the final assessment, I'm the most expendable one. The plans are done. They can do the rest. This is still wrong. I'm the leader. I should be the one to die ... shouldn't I? I'm not worthy of this honour; what did I ever do to deserve this curse? Honour it is to be such an integral part of a creation, the very spark of a building, but to live out my years in darkness alone while failure hangs over the heads of my fellows is a curse unlike any other I could imagine. I don't want to live this way; I don't want to _die_. I'll do both now, condemned and saved by living death. I was a fool to think I could escape, so long ago. I was young then, and the architect wanted me to complete the building. That didn't work out.

Did the power grid just stop humming? No, it's there, still there. Huh, kind of like you don't notice the beat of your own fuel pump until you think about ... it'd be so easy to drift off, to ... to ... what? I feel weak; dilute. My sense of perception attenuates. The electricity goes through me, out of me, and out ceases to be out. The wires that wrap and wend through wall and floor to report back to me never leave me in the first place.

We opened up a 'bot once, after walling him up and using him as a resistance load. The light of life still burned in his optics, dim as they were, and he snarled a little to see me, but when ran the scanner to check for life force, there was nothing inside him. All had gone into the building. I wonder, was his snarl the expression of an Autobot seeing a Decepticon or a building seeing a maintenance crew?

I'm slipping away. Will I go quicker because I'm designed to lose my mind? Designed to lose myself. My vision blurs. Is this it? I hear voices from afar: sluggish, slow, and distorted, as if through fluid, as if through energon. It's just the hum of electricity, the murmur of the supports, that's all; it has to be. My soul will drain away without a sound, so it's not that, I'm still here. Make the words go away. Make the _world_ go away. Let me lose myself in peace, in pieces, alone. Cybertron, when was the last time that I was alone, really alone? It's hard for me to remember now, and it will only get harder with time, when there comes the time that there is no me to remember. Will anyone remember me? Will they remember this structure; my structure? The voices intrude, louder, harder to ignore.

"Tsk. If he had just recharged like a normal machine instead of insisting on working without pause for a solution ..." Is that Hook? I look up - _I look up!_ The hum of the electricity is gone, and I feel a queer pang of loss. Have I died? Then, I'm dead and a failure. I've failed them.

"Ah. Scrapper's awake!" Scavenger doesn't _sound_ dead, but really, what do I know on that matter? I've courted death with offerings but never followed through myself. I think.

"Thank you for stating the obvious. No really, I'm eternally grateful."

I sit up from my slumped posture in a snap and pin Hook with a glare, dead or alive. "Cut it out. If you're in a snit -" I pause. Memory returns. I did indeed work longer than was wise. Must have fallen asleep, my anxiety following me into my dreams, and that was all they were – dreams, I reassure myself. I ought to be sprawled out on the floor in front of the table. Someone must have pulled me into a sitting position against the wall; gotten me out of the way. I'm okay now. I'm safe. We're all safe. Until the deadline, which may prove deader than usual.

"I am _not_ in a snit," the surgeon replies petulantly. "Mixmaster has been obnoxiously self-satisfied all morning, getting on every last one of my circuits. He has discovered workable materials and wishes to speak with you."

"No!" I stumble to my feet and glance around, wondering where to flee.

"Are you functioning properly?" Scavenger asks, concern in his voice and bearing.

"He's just being silly because he hasn't had enough downtime to sort out his systems and refresh." Hook places his hands on his hips and gives me a sour look.

"I -" I freeze when Mixmaster enters, grinning. No, no, no! Don't save me at the expense of the others! Salvation of that sort isn't worth it; is a curse. Don't doom me to what I escaped so many lifetimes ago.

"I've found it!" he exclaims cheerily. "Preliminary tests are ver-very promising. Seems to take all the stresses that'll be thrown at it, and best of all, it can be manufactured easily here on Earth out of locally available materials." Mixmaster trails off and frowns. "Scrapper, why are you looking at me like that?"

**The End**


End file.
